Planting

This is how God said good morning to me today.  We're overcast and expecting rain now, so Cliff and I went to Hilltop Farm to buy a few bedding plants.  After the fiasco last year, I didn't even attempt to start my own tomato and pepper plants from seed.  

I bought two eggplants, four sweet pepper plants, and eight tomato plants.  Also some impatiens, but those don't go in the garden.  

Iris always keeps a close eye on me when I'm gardening, especially when the tiller is running.  Notice the volunteer potato plants in the foreground.  I'll be tilling there before long, getting rid of them.  

Seems like every time I use the tiller, I till up a toad.

I planted the impatiens by the back steps.  There are two pansies next to the steps that came up volunteer from last year.

The mayapples I brought up from the woods three years ago are thriving in the flowerbed on the north side of the house.  

One of them is blooming.  Those little purple flowers are from the woods also.  The only thing I don't have in my wildwood flower garden is a jack-in-the-pulpit.  They grow further down in the ditches, and I don't enjoy climbing up and down the hills with a shovel, especially this year;  because of our mild winter, the ticks are everywhere.
I planted some corn a week or two ago, and I didn't think it was going to germinate.  So today I tilled it up to replant more.  After it was too late to do anything about it, I looked at all the seeds the tiller had dug up and realized the corn was starting to germinate after all.  I could kick myself; corn seed is so expensive!  

The gardening has started

Yesterday I planted sugar snap peas, lettuce, cabbage, and beets.  The grass has started growing with the warm days we've had lately, so I decided my garden may as well be growing too.  I only planted things that won't be harmed by a freeze or snow.  
Planting the seeds is the easy part.  Of the things I planted, I see only one that will likely be trouble-free:  beets.  That is one vegetable that has never given me a problem.  I'll have to dust the cabbage to keep the worms from consuming them.  The peas and lettuce will likely be eaten by rabbits before they get any size to them.  And I'll will be left wondering why I even bother.  This reminds me of a poem I wrote in April of 1992:
  

There's a gorgeous spring day in the making,

And a peach-blossom scent on the breeze;

So I know I should be quite contented,

But the rabbits are eating my peas!

The sun shines, with no cloud to dim it,

And the birds twitter, up in the trees ---

But out in my early spring garden,

The rabbits are eating my peas!

On a beautiful morning like this one

My heart should be light as you please,

But I can't get myself in the spirit

When the rabbits are eating my peas.

There's a song wafting through God's creation

On bright, April mornings like these;

But how can I keep myself smiling

When the rabbits are eating my peas!  

Our winter has been so dry, I can't help but wonder if we are in for a dry spring and summer.  We're due for a drought, after three years of abundant moisture.  But today, hope springs eternal.  I have visions of a perfect garden unmarred by squash bugs, cabbage worms, and tomato blight.  
I can dream, can't I?

    Were my granddaughters really that young once?  Where has the time gone?

Finally, a normal winter in Missouri

The past two winters have been rough ones.  Lots of snow, single-digit temperatures that would not let up. That isn't normal.  Usually we'll have a couple of two- to four-inch snows in a winter, and several times when the ground will be barely covered; around here, it's hardly worth investing in a sled for the kiddies.  There will normally be a few frigid days followed by a warmup into the fifties or sixties:  That's when those of us with motorcycles will sneak in a ride and say we cheated winter.  Of course, on those unseasonably warm winter days, the same wind that blew the warm front in is often still blowing so hard that a motorcycle ride isn't that pleasant, so we make it a brief ride.  
During the past two winters there were no motorcycle rides; not a single one.  
Right now it's a frigid fifteen degrees with a forecast high of thirty-seven; there's a promise of temperatures in the fifties in a couple of days.  
A normal winter.  
For the past three years, at some point in January I've bought little seed-starting kits and started my pepper and tomato plants in the house.  The first year it was great fun.  The second year, it was OK.  Last year it was drudgery, toting those trays around the house to the best sunny spot.  
I had a reason for doing it, though.  Most of the places where I had always bought my plants no longer had the economical little six-packs.  Walmart and Colonial Nursery only had single plants or two-packs of half-grown plants, and they were pricey.  
Last year I discovered that Hilltop Farm and Greenhouse was selling the six-plant packs.  I'm counting on them this year, so I hope they don't let me down.  I'm hoping for a better garden than I had last year.  What with the knee replacement and a bad tomato season, it was pitiful.  I think I only had borscht one time, and no ratatouille at all.   

I opened a drawer yesterday looking for an owner's manual for a clock (long story) and found these yellowed old spelling tests from 1997.  My oldest grandson came to my house after school back then, and I went over his spelling words with him ever single day.  He got a lot of good spelling grades during that time.  He's supposed to be here today; I'm going to ask him if he remembers how I made him practice his words till he got them right.  


I ought to have a good day today; for the first time in months, I slept straight through the night for seven hours.  

Dinner will always be the noon meal around here

Every so often I tell people this, just so it's clear what meal I'm talking about.  I realize the vast majority of people consider the evening meal to be "dinner".  I came from farming people, and on the farm, dinner is the biggest and most important meal of the day.  I remember visiting Uncle Leo and his family; at straight up noon, Uncle Leo would come in all sweaty and tired from whatever work he was doing in the field.  He and Uncle Carl helped one another a lot with farm work, so sometimes he'd be there too.  Anyway, they had been working hard and were starving, and they expected a big meal.  Believe me, Aunt Mary knew how to set a table fit for hungry men (and kids).  And she could do this while spending the morning canning green beans and tomatoes, too.  
Before Mother married, she worked at various farms as a "hired girl", and she used to talk about how those farm hands (my dad was one) could eat.  If we had visitors that really scarfed their food down, she would say, "This is just like feeding threshers!"
She loved to see people eat.  
So yes, Dinner is at noon here.  
One faithful reader expressed surprise that we are still having our main meal of the day at noon; she thought that once Cliff retired, we'd move the main meal to suppertime. (yes, that's supper.  Not dinner.)  
Now that Cliff gets up by 6 A.M. and goes to bed by 10 P.M., I haven't been cooking an evening meal at all.  We both need help with our weight, so we agreed to eat something like a bowl of cereal or a small salad for supper.  If there are low-calorie leftovers from dinner (the noon meal), we might partake of those, but only small servings.


As I expected, squash bugs have pretty much wiped me out of the zucchini business.  In the past, once the squash plants were dead, they moved on to the cucumber vines and killed them also.  I have already replanted zucchini and cucumbers; last year I was able to keep the squash bugs from killing the late crop; but I never count on anything.  They've wiped me out too many times in the past.   
I think I have enough green beans to pick today to go with our rib-eye steak.  Yes, we're having steak again.  We have to use up last year's beef!  It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.  We'll also have corn on the cob again, since it's ready.  Oh, and Pennsylvania red cabbage, which I haven't prepared before.  
I've mentioned before that when I was growing up, Mother called corn on the cob "roasting ears".  However, to my childish ears it sounded like one word.  I thought it was "roastinears" until I was almost grown.   
OK, I'm off to pick some green beans.  

Various things

Last Sunday we went to visit a co-worker of Cliff's to get some very heavy pipe; Cliff is going to use it somehow in the frame he's building to hold up the $100 hoist he bought a couple weeks ago.  

For several years, I thought I wanted a gazebo; these people had one that might actually be affordable, made from the top of an old grain bin.  I was impressed with their ingenuity.  However, at this point in my life, I've decided it wouldn't be worth all the trouble of retrieving such an item.   At this point in my life, very few things are worth the trouble, to tell you the truth.  

  Cliff's latest toy, the Oliver 1655 Diesel tractor, arrived Tuesday.  He's already fixed one thing on it; I wish I could recall what it was he fixed.  

And there it sits, with Cliff's other, larger project in the background.  No, that one isn't finished, and you can thank Missouri weather for that:  It's always either too cold or too humid to paint, and until Cliff gets it painted, he isn't going to be putting all the parts back on it.  He'll have more opportunity to catch the weather just right for painting when he retires.  

And now, on to the garden.  Last weekend, although it's early, I set out a row of peppers, as well as two tomato plants.  For some reason, my tomato seedlings are really starting to look sickly, even though I have them outside in a safe place and have been watering them daily.  So last night, I set out more of them.  If there's a frost warning, I'll cover them with straw; that has worked in the past, except for the time there was a really hard freeze in May.  

The problem might be that the little plants are overcrowded in those tiny pots; notice the roots sticking out.  

These pepper seedlings have received the same treatment as the tomatoes, and they look great.  Oh well, I never claimed to be a master gardener.   
I had some potatoes all cut up and ready to plant on Good Friday, as is my tradition.  However, since the forecast for the rest of the week sounds soggy, I went ahead and planted them yesterday evening; at least the moon sign is right (plant root crops in the waning moon).  My St. Patrick's Day potatoes are almost all up and growing now.  

Springlike weather and growing things

We're supposed to have a high temperature near 80 tomorrow!  I have a row hoed and ready to plant my St. Patrick's Day potatoes.  I may plant some beets and carrots if the soil dries out just a wee bit more; also sugar snap peas and head lettuce.  
A couple of the pepper seeds have germinated... finally!  Yesterday I went ahead and put my tiny cabbage plants out; they look no worse for the wear today.  Cliff says he's been seeing rabbits frolicking around near the garden area when he comes home from work at night, and rabbits love peas and lettuce.  We may have a problem.  I don't imagine rabbits are easily trapped, because they are vegetarians.  What would I bait the trap with?  They have everything they need growing all around them.  One thing I have to say about the neighbor's previous pesky dogs:  While they were around, no rabbits were seen near the place.  
It's still five or six weeks until I put out my tomatoes and peppers, so they have a long time in the house yet; poor things, I have such a reputation for killing house plants.  I'm really trying to be vigilant this time, though.  
Last year, my friend Ora sent me a recipe she found somewhere that's supposed to help prevent tomato blight.  While I really don't think it will help, I'm going to try it.  Here's the recipe:  

Tomato Blight Buster

Use this mix to ward off many common tomato diseases from your newly transplanted tomato seedlings.

3 cups of compost

1/2 cup of powdered non fat milk

1/2 cup of Epsom salts

1 tbsp of baking soda

sprinkle a handful of the mixture into each planting hole...for additional disease defense, sprinkle a little powdered milk on top of the soil after planting, and repeat every few weeks throughout the growing season.  

I was talking to another friend, Carol, on the phone the other day; she said someone told her to put a teaspoon of soda in the hole before you plant the tomatoes to prevent blight; as you can see, there's soda in the above recipe.  So who knows?  Maybe it's just the right mix of mumbo-jumbo that'll keep the blight away.  

I wish I weren't so skeptical.  Also, I'm a little worried that Iris will get a whiff of milk in my tomato patch and start digging.  

I'll keep you posted.  

Growing things

These are tomato seedlings; they germinated overnight.  I purchased this seed tray at Home Depot, and I like it.  When it's time to put them in the garden, I can plant the whole pot.    

The pepper seeds I planted the same day aren't showing signs of life yet, but I'm sure in the next day or two they'll rise to the occasion.   This is the Walmart seed-starting greenhouse.  This will be the third year I've used one of these, so obviously I like it.  When it's time to transplant, the little peat bundle lifts right out.  This is the cheapest greenhouse I've used, by far.  You can also buy replacement peat pellets and use the same tray next year.  Win/win.  

The lettuce seeds I planted in the garden over three weeks ago were waiting for a day of sunshine with temperatures in the 60's.  While Cliff and I were enjoying a motorcycle ride to Chillicothe, tiny lettuce seedlings peeked through the topsoil.  

Yesterday I started "hardening off" the cabbage plants that have been residing in the house.  I'll leave them out a little longer each day and hopefully set them out by next weekend.  This seed-starter tray is from Home Depot, and I don't really care for it.  The soil that came with it is loose inside each little plastic pot, and I'm not sure how I'll go about removing them when it's time to plant them.  I may use a spoon or something.  Even when wet, the soil is very loose.   


Oh, and check out this link from The Old Farmer's Almanac that tells how to have an herb garden in a bag.  Click HERE.   Looks pretty much foolproof, and would be great for a city gardener with little space.
  

plodding toward spring

Yes, Cliff still plans to retire; he said he just gets scared when he thinks about being on a limited income with very few resources to fall back on.  Hey, we've gotten by without a net for years; we'll do whatever we must.  
The Western Farm show is coming up this weekend; it's a trade show for real farmers, not for dabblers like us.  There will be few, if any, items we need or can afford.  But it's a fun outing in February.  I follow the Western Farm Show on Facebook and snagged four free tickets, which saves us ten bucks on our two tickets.  Cliff's brother, Phil, plans to go along.  I'll hand the extra free ticket to somebody walking toward the ticket booth at the show.  
We attended last year, and I blogged about it.  

My kitchen-window herb garden is doing well.  Left to right, that's chives, parsley, and basil.  Basil obviously doesn't care for cool temperatures:  The pot at the back had as many seeds planted in it as the one in front, but it was very near the window during that miserable cold spell we had.  Not many of the seeds in that pot made it.  I'm thinking in a week or two I can start snipping at the leaves of these little plants.  

This is the mini-greenhouse I bought at Home Depot; I prefer the much cheaper versions from Walmart because in this one, the soil doesn't fill the space allotted.  From the closest to the back, we have:  oregano, lavender, dill, cauliflower, and two rows of cabbage.  I've never been able to get lavender to grow, and it looks like that isn't going to change.  I should not have put these herbs in the same container with cabbage and cauliflower, but I did.  We'll see if any of this stuff lives long enough to make it to the garden.  In a week, I'm starting my tomato plants.   
Because of the salt content in our softened water, I bring water in from the outside hydrant for my little plants.  Just something else to sit around and clutter my counters because, you know, I like containers of water sitting around.  
Pillows.  Let's talk about pillows.  For over two years I've had a stiff neck that comes and goes.  Daily Steals had a memory foam pillow at a good price, so I bought that; it was an improvement, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.  So I went searching through the house and came up with a softer, and less thick pillow than I've been using.  Problem solved!  I guess I just don't need that much pillow.  
Exercise.  Let's talk about exercise.  Cliff and I walk almost every day, but I've wanted to do just a wee bit of upper-body training.  I bought an exercise mat, hunted up some dumbbells, and started doing a few basic moves that ought to be good for me.  I'm looking for some printable exercise instructions; Sparkpeople has some, but a lot of theirs involve sitting on a large ball.  I don't own a large ball, and if I did, I'm not sure I want to try balancing myself on one and exercising.  I might hurt myself.
I'm sure you won't be surprised to read that world food prices may rise.  So what else is new?  Gas prices go up, so do food prices.  I hope my garden does well this year.  
Nobody ever sings the old hymns I grew up with.  Here's one that's been on my mind for a few days.

The highlight of my day

The older I get, the harder it is for me to get through winter with good grace.  I used to milk several cows year-around, which meant I was outside doing chores for a total of two to four hours a day even in the bitterest weather.  These days I leave it up to Cliff to feed Bonnie-the-Jersey-cow; after all, he's going outside anyhow.  
We do take our daily walk in most all kinds of weather; since we got our Muck boots, the snow doesn't stop us, and we know how to dress for cold weather.  That walk is the one thing that forces me outside on cold, blustery days, and honestly I do it more because I want to keep Cliff's ticker in good shape than for myself.  
Once flowers start growing and I have a little garden planted, going outside as soon as it's daylight is the highlight of my day.  It's exciting to see living things grow and bloom and change day by day.  
It's funny how, three years ago, I started gardening again just for the fun of it; now prices have risen so much that the garden is almost becoming a necessity.  It's still fun, though.  
I regret that I can't raise heirloom tomatoes; they have the best flavor, but they are terribly susceptible to blight.  My favorite canning tomato varieties used to be Big Boy and Rutgers.  No, they're not heirloom tomatoes, but they are also not blight tolerant.  I also used to love Ponderosa for slicing; it's an heirloom tomato, I believe, rather pinkish in color.  These days I stick with Legend, Celebrity, or Jet Star.  None of these has flavor that compares with my old favorites, but I do what I must to even have tomatoes at all.
I need to have a talk with Jennifer of Hidden Hills Farm, to find out when the best time is to start tomato plants inside.  When I can do that, I'll  have something growing, and that will be a boost to my spirits.  I envy people who have lovely house plants, because I'm sure that brightens up their winter days.  Unfortunately, I forget to water house plants and they die of thirst.  It's all I can do to tend to my tomato seedlings; last year I didn't do so well remembering them.        
Yes, from spring through fall the garden and my flowers are the highlight of each day.  
In winter?  My first cup of coffee in the morning is the highlight, and things pretty much go downhill from there.  
Come on, springtime!


P.S.  While ordering my twenty Legend tomato seeds, I found an improved variety of Rutgers that's supposed to be more disease resistant.  I'm going to give it a try!

food talk

There was a time last spring or early summer when I thought my tomato plants were all going to succumb to blight, and I bought some store-bought canned tomatoes at Aldi's and Walmart.  I'm fairly certain I paid around seventy-five cents a can for those.  As it happened, my blighted tomato vines continued to produce flawed-but-tasty tomatoes up until the first frost; there were plenty for me to can, as it turned out.  I still have twenty quarts and two pints of tomatoes left; I'm not sure if that will last until the 2011 crop starts bearing, but it should come close.  I have a lot of recipes that use tomatoes.  
When we were last at Walmart, I looked at the canned tomatoes and almost keeled over from shock:  They are now ninety-nine cents per can.  How are people going to be able to afford to eat, with prices rising so fast?  I certainly hope our tomato crop does well this year.  I realize gasoline prices are the cause of this exorbitant inflation, but whatever the cause, it's scary.  
While I'm talking about food, I'm very happy to announce that the two bushels of number-two-grade Fuji apples bought in October have lasted nicely, without withering or rotting.  If you're looking for an apple that's a good winter keeper, Fuji is your best bet.  If you haven't tried them, I suggest you do so:  they're sweet and juicy, bursting with flavor.  They've become our favorite for eating out of hand.  Each year we buy a half-bushel or so of Galas early on in the season, since they're the first ones ready; when those are gone, we return to the orchard and purchase some early Fujis.  While we're there, I ask the orchard owners when they think they'll be closing for the year, and we return just before they close to buy a couple of bushels of the late Fujis, which seem to keep much better than the early variety.   There are six apples left, out of what we bought in October.  From here on out, we'll be paying over a dollar a pound for our apples.  That will hurt.  In fact, I'll only buy enough for Cliff to take one each day in his lunch to work; I only eat cheap apples.  The one flaw with Fuji apples is that they're huge, so you'd better be pretty hungry when you eat one, or else get your husband to share one with you.
The one fruit I buy year around on a fairly regular basis is bananas, because they do such a good job of dressing up our cereal or oatmeal.  The only time I don't buy them is when we have home-grown strawberries or peaches to take their place.      
I saw ground turkey at Price Chopper this week for ninety-nine cents a pound, but I couldn't justify buying it when we have so much ground beef in the freezer from Bonnie's calf last year.  Her present son is growing nicely, and will probably fill up the freezer this summer just like his half-brother did last year.  
One way or another, we will continue our struggles to keep the wolf from the door.  Thank God I have a lot of bean-and-rice recipes to use as a last resort.

In the garden....

These late beets would have made it to the table by now if we'd had any rain.  This was an experiment anyhow, and it continues.  Will the beets grow after the rain we just got, even though we've had two hard freezes?  

The lettuce is just fine, still tasty.  Lettuce is not afraid of cold weather.  The late-planted carrots, on the left, also seem undaunted by the cold.  I pulled one, washed it off, and ate it; it was small, but good.  We'll see if the carrots go dormant for winter and then start growing in spring.  

This cabbage plant is actually making a head.  Notice the holes in the leaves?  What sort of bug or worm would be alive in this cold weather?  

The pasture Cliff seeded behind the house is green again.  Amazing, with so little rain.  When it was first planted we got gully-washers, so there are a lot of ditches washed in it.  

Cliff's sand-blasting stuff he intends to paint, later on.  Outside my window, sparrows and bluebirds avail themselves of the birdbath.  I love seeing the bluebirds; last year it was rare to see even one.  Now I sometimes see five at once bathing.  I think it must be the ones that used the bluebird house this summer.  
I'd think they'd freeze to death getting wet when the temperature is in the 30's.  

Duh

I awoke last night to one of those middle-of-the-night revelations.  I thought of our plan to have Direct TV installed Tuesday, then having them freeze the account until our contract with Dish runs out in February.  
That can't possible work.  
If Direct TV is hooked up, Dish will have to be unhooked.  
We'd be without television while still paying Dish!  At least that's what it seems like to me.  I'll call the Direct TV people today.  
Yesterday I removed the tomato cages and plants from the garden.  The soil is hard as concrete from lack of rain, so I left the T-posts.  Cliff can easily remove them using the bucket of his tractor; if I think of it, I'll do a little video to show you how he does it.  
It's a shame that doctor yelled at us about Cliff's weight, because there are lots of green tomatoes that would have really been tasty, sliced and fried.  
Here's how I fix fried green tomatoes:  slice rather thinly, dip the slices in milk, then flour, then beaten egg, then crushed cracker crumbs.  We prefer them this way rather than dipped in corn meal.  You should fry some today, unless you have a grouchy doctor too.  
I was planning on mulching the strawberries with straw today, but thank goodness I googled some information that let me know it's too early for that; I'm supposed to wait until we've had several frosts, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  After strawberry season next year, I'll use some of the runners and start a new bed so the plants don't be so crowded.    
I have two dwarf apple trees arriving next week, along with three raspberry vines.  Here again, I found some information by way of Google just in the nick of time.  I'm not supposed to plant raspberries anywhere that potatoes, tomatoes, peppers or eggplants have been in the past three years, because raspberries are susceptible to verticillium wilt.  Just what I needed, something else to go all blighty!  It's a good thing I only ordered three vines. 
Bonnie-the-cow should be finished up with her hot date by now; hopefully we'll get her home tomorrow, because we're out of milk. 
  

Things I looked at this morning

This is a flower on the hibiscus plant I grew from a seed my cousin gave me.  Isn't it breathtaking?  

Almost six inches across!  Don't you just love old yardsticks?  My mom broke a few like this on my butt as a kid; it was her choice weapon for spanking me.  Probably because there was always one close at hand, thanks to her wallpapering sideline.  


When I removed the strawberry plants from the bed in front of the house, I hated to see that space just sit there growing weeds, so I grabbed a ten-cent envelope of flower seeds I had on hand and planted them, without reading the envelope.  

This is what I got.  

Here they are from the other side.  I wish I knew what kind of flower this is; I'd be sure and avoid buying that kind of seed from now on.

Here's another mystery plant I purchased over two years ago.  I like it.  

Here are the walnuts I've gathered so far.  I spread them out in the barn so I can periodically stomp them to get the outside hulls dry enough to remove.  Someone left a comment saying she was going to pick up black walnuts, but after reading about them, she decided it was too much trouble.  Honestly, it's no trouble at all.  You pick them up from beneath the trees, which I consider fun because it's done in the great outdoors.  You remove the nasty hulls:  I used to spread them on the driveway where the car would run over them a few times, which works fine except occasionally the whole nut will get cracked.  Removing the vestiges of the hulls will stain your fingers, but it eventually wears off.  You let the hulled walnuts dry for a couple of weeks, and then all you have to do is crack them and pick out the nutmeats.  My mom always stored the hulled nuts in a garage or shed; on cold winter days she would put on a coat, go outside with a hammer, and crack a dishpan full of them.  She would bring the cracked nuts inside, and in the evening she and Daddy would pick out the nutmeats as they sat around chatting and waiting for bedtime.  
I planted beets in the spring, and only a few of them came up.  I think I made borscht once, and I left the rest of the beets in the ground all this time.  Today I pulled up one huge beet, peeled and diced it, and microwaved it.

The color of the beet was interesting, sort of streaked with white.  I didn't know if it would taste good or not.  

That five-month-old beet turned out just fine, and I fixed it up Harvard style.    

Cliff wanted me to take a picture of his plate, so here it is.  Stuffed peppers, green beans, and Harvard beets, all brought in from the garden this morning.  The hamburger in the stuffed peppers, of course, is from Sir Loin, Bonnie's calf from last year.

If only I had taken pictures

Last fall Cliff offered to plow my garden, and I turned him down; I think I had some harebrained experiment in mind that would not have required plowing.  After letting the idea hibernate all winter, I decided it wasn't a good one and told Cliff I wanted my garden plowed after all.  
When the spring thaw came, the garden area turned into a quagmire for a couple of weeks.  Then we started getting rain every other day.  Cliff was willing to plow, but the ground needed to dry out a lot.  I'd watch the forecast, knowing that all we needed was four or five days with no rain: our sandy soil drains really fast.  But the rains kept coming.  Thursday, after getting home from our motorcycle ride, Cliff suggested it might be possible to plow; the only way to find out was to hook up to a plow and try it.  
He took the little John Deere (I used to call it the Jap Deere because it was made in Japan, but some people felt that was a racist expression) and hooked up to a plow the size of Texas.  Oh yes, he had high hopes.  He managed to make it about fifteen feet before the little tractor spun out.  In its defense, it doesn't have the proper tires for such work; turf tires were never meant to bite into the dirt.  If I'd had my camera, you would have loved the video of this scene, which was reminiscent of "the little engine that could".  But that's rather like a fisherman telling about the one that got away, isn't it?    
I helped Cliff unhook the plow, which he left in the garden while he went after a bigger tractor:  Since the big Oliver is in an eternal state of being restored, he chose our brother-in-law's Mahindra, which was definitely up to the task.  
A big tractor in a small garden is pretty tricky, especially if there are trees and a fence at one end and a strawberry bed at the other.  I stood by, letting Cliff know when to raise the plow each time he approached the strawberries, and in less than ten minutes, the plowing was done.  
When we first went out to do the plowing, I had suggested Cliff make the garden six feet wider.  As I stood there watching the dirt turn over, though, I remembered how much it taxed my knees last year to try and keep up with the gardening and told him to forget the expansion.  
The garden is presently covered by six inches of snow.  But at least when the weather is right, I can get out there with the tiller.  Cliff's job is done.

I want to garden

This is as far as my garden has gotten so far; there's a mixture of plants on the left that includes broccoli and cabbage.  On the right are my tomatoes.  Above those trays you get a glimpse of the seed potatoes I've cut up so the pieces can "heal over" before I plant them.  There are Yukon Gold and Kennebec potatoes.  I'd love to be able to plant some of them on St. Patrick's Day.
Cliff hasn't been able to plow my garden due to frequent rains.  We have sandy soil that drains quickly, and if only we could get three days straight with no rain, plowing would be possible.  
Meanwhile, I move those two trays of seedlings to the east bedroom before I go to bed, where they'll get plenty of morning sun.  Once Cliff is awake each day, I move them next to the two windows in my bedroom, which face south.  So far, that's the extent of my gardening this year.  

squash and tomatoes and saving on groceries

Vicki left this comment on my last post: "Will all of your produce really last until next Summer? Amazing! I'd be curious to know what range your grocery bills fall in."

No, all my produce won't last until next summer. The only thing I canned in huge quantity was the tomatoes, because so many of our healthy winter recipes (not to mention chili; and Cliff's favorite, spaghetti) require tomatoes. Even Wal-mart's house brand of tomatoes are over eighty cents a can these days, and it's hard to find any without salt added. I'm still not sure these are enough to last through the winter; only time will tell.

There are forty or so quarts and pints of tomatoes here,

and several pints stuck here with various pickles and peaches.

If I shopped carefully and kept myself on a budget (which I don't, but should), I'm pretty confident we could get by for under $40 a week; we eat lots of bean-and-rice dishes in fall and winter, and of course this summer we've eaten so many various garden things. We have our own milk now, too; but I can't really say we're saving money, since we paid a fortune for the Jersey cow.

And then there's the butternut squash. This year has been my first experience raising these prolific demons. Oh, I love winter squash, but enough is enough. I'm not really sure how well, or how long, they will keep; in the past when I've bought butternut squash, I've had it last on a counter for a couple of months; I've also had it rot. We shall see. If it all decides to rot, there will be a whole lot of rotting going on!

I have squash in a closet...

Squash inside the door, behind my recliner...

squash on my front porch...

and squash where I've tossed it right outside my garden.

And they're still coming on; oh, the vines seem to be dying back a little in the center, but I read online that the squash will go ahead and ripen even after the vines die.

HELP!

If my peppers ever start producing like they should, I may make some green tomato relish later on. Other than that, I have no further plans for canning or freezing anything else. Of course, we know what Robert Burns said about best laid schemes... "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley".

Monday thoughts and gardening adventures

Thanks to my readers who identified the tall, scraggly plants in my flowerbed. They are Liatris, also knows as Blazing Star. It's actually a wildflower, so I guess that's why I thought it looked like a weed; many wildflowers are considered as weeds. I'll be glad when mine actually make some flowers like the ones in the picture, because right now they're pretty hideous.

The okra is looking fantastic; I should have plenty to put in the freezer for use in gumbo, soups, and stews. This is another plant that's easy to grow. It loves heat and drought, but will take the rain if it comes. It really doesn't have a lot of pests that bother it; I lightly dusted these plants with Sevin when I was out there yesterday because some small holes had been nibbled in the leaves, but it wouldn't have been necessary.
In spite of all the bug damage you can see on the leaves of my Savoy cabbage, so far the heads seem to be developing well.

This is todays harvest: Yes, the cucumbers are tiny; but we eat them like this, skin and all, knowing that within four days we'll have more cucumbers than we can even give away.

Cliff and I had a discussion this morning about the famous people who die too young from drugs abused and mis-used. I told him about the application on Facebook called "Farm Town". You start out with a tiny patch of ground and a few coins. You can buy seeds and plant them and sell the harvest, and eventually make enough coins to buy more land, a house, barns, and so forth. The game was highly addictive and great fun for me, until I finally had the biggest house and the best barn that coins could buy. I kept planting more crops, but now there was nothing left I really wanted to buy.

The other day I accidentally deleted the application, and I realized I didn't care. The game had become boring because I had 300,000 coins, and nothing left that I wanted to buy; I had everything I could possibly accumulate. I discussed this on Facebook with a longtime Internet friend, Kelly. She said, "Wouldn't it be great if real life was like that?" What she meant was, wouldn't it be nice to get everything you want and still have more money than you can spend?

That's when it hit me: real life is like that. That's why M. J. and Elvis and Janis Joplin and so many others have ended up dying meaningless deaths, far too soon. There was nowhere else for them to go, nothing else to do. They had done it all.

garden report

By this time next week, I'll bet we have all the grape tomatoes we want. Hmmm, I see a really red one in back that I didn't notice as I was taking the picture.

I actually found a cucumber that was about three times this size, later. I ate it.

This is a baby butternut squash. So far I've been successful at keeping the squash bugs away from my viney crops.

The bush cantaloupe plants have an amazing number of blooms.

This is my accidental sweet potato vine that I happened to notice on the end of a sweet potato I kept around too long before baking it.